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Monday, April 17, 2006

What's Eating Amtrak?

Dinner in the diner. Drinks and snacks in the lounge. Activities revolving around food are part of the lore of the passenger train and certainly a big part of our everyday lives. When we vacation or travel for business, food becomes one of the perks. Even if we have to attend a stuffy business meeting, we can look forward to dinner in a new, if not fancy place afterwards. No matter how you got to the meeting, having new food experiences on the way and on the way back used to be something to anticipate.Not if you fly or ride Amtrak these days.What has happened to airline meals mirrors what happened to the great food service of Pullman Palace and Fred Harvey forty some years ago. In a funhouse sort of way. Because what is happening to airline food is grotesque.

George and Fred understood that eating is something we do naturally, compulsively, and almost always when we don't have anything else to do. These days, we also do it when we have nothing else to do but look at something, as in when we watch a movie or DVD, or when we watch the scenery roll by or pass underneath the aircraft. George Pullman and Fred Harvey built empires on the need of people to eat while traveling. They also saw the need for people to sleep, or to just get off the (fill in mode of transportation here) and stay still for awhile in a strange and exotic place. George wasn't into the food as much as the sleeping, and Fred only for awhile made sleeping accomodations available on trains. But Fred knew where to put a hotel.

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Happy to write something about any subject. Strong political conservative but not far right. Marketing a number of novels I have written and writing more. Check out my blogs and other writing on my Author Website